I Sent the following message as feedback to the I-I membership pages. Comments are  appreciated!

 

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While browsing through the I-I membership packages I recognized my eyebrows were raising gradually to unprecedented levels (actually, one was going down, and the other was going up).. When has this obtrusive marketeering started, and why? Because it is American tradition, or just because you can, or is it to balance out on the integral-awesomeness-scorecard..?

Anyways, I would like to make a plea for an additional package:

I-I Berserker (Ultimate Membership) - $5000/month
RECEIVES THE FOLLOWING
- All Platinum Member benefits, including the I-I Membership Kit, plus:
- Brain-Mind Machine with 3-week Overmind development training module
- 2 Free Big Mind Satori sessions per months
- Receiving calls from random I-I members to confirm your coolness*
- Invitation to host the I-I Annual Gala with Customized speech on your personal Integral Uberness by Ken Wilber
- Invitation to crash at any of the Integral Multiplex members, any time, any place**

*e.g.: “guys, stu just invited us to his secret gig”
**breakfast not included


I have been sharing an IntegralNaked account for a while now, attended the first I-I Leadership Seminar in Europe (Hamburg) and have been active in boosting (my) integral thinking from the very first moment that it made its moves on the web (www.integralreflections.com, which is now outdated and moved over to Zaadz).

It is just that I endorse so much of the content that is being spread and shared here that I experience some of the marketing to be over-the-top so that it actually devalues the content and the underlying principles (being non-exclusionary, enactive, and unfolding).

As a dutch near-Business studies graduate, I am sincerely eager to contribute my efforts in facilitating the emergence of human potential--as in, fostering consciousness and care. Particularly in the business environment, in which  Integral theory, IOS, and IMP are undeniable necessities imo. Therefore, I would hope not to be obligated to work with dozens of copyrights and trademarks to acquire legitimacy. In my experience, this strangles some of the authentic curiosity and continual transcendence and inclusion that has gotten us to resonate on this level of compassion and creativity in the first place.

Hope these two cents are appreciated and would love to get your thoughts on this!

Thomas Vaassen 

I just posted a part on visionary art at the visionary music pod here, which might be of interest to more artists, people interested in subtle realms of conscious experience, spiritual practitioners..

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Considering music is a form of art, it would be interesting to explore the links to visionary art in general.. I've gotten to know this form of artistry through an inspiring manifesto I read some time ago by mr. L. Caruana.. here (i've got it as pdf as well, can send it to you by mail)
Brilliantly written, if you ask me..


Allow me to post some excerpts:

"Where Surrealists tried to elevate the dream-state into a higher reality (and opposed the use of narcotics) the Visionary artist uses all means at his disposal - even at great risk to himself - to access different states of consciousness and expose the resulting vision. Art of the Visionary attempts to show what lies beyond the boundary of our sight. Through dream, trance, or other altered states, the artist attempts to see the unseen - attaining a visionary state that transcends our regular modes of perception. The task awaiting him, thereafter, is to communicate his vision in a form recognizable to 'everyday sight'."

"All visionary artists are united by this spirit of on-going experimentation. And their works bear testimony to those mind-altering, soul-shattering but potentially enlightening experiences which may transpire over the course of each experiment.
The aim of these experiments is to bring alternative states of consciousness to reality. Or
rather, to bear witness to other realites which are made evident in alternative states of
consciousness. Hence, the images, colours, reflections, modes of perceiving and indeed the insights which the artist himself has witnessed in a dream, vision, trance, revelation, mediumistic or druginduced state are what he seeks to reproduce in a plastic medium, so as to give it a more or less permanent reality 'here', in the world of our shared perceptions and spoken dialogues."

"The artist on such a 'vision quest' is not seeking images for their own sake. Rather, the images uprise during his life-long journey to the Sacred, offering him entrance to a higher, spiritual realm. These images offer a gradual awakening to life's underlying holiness - what Aldous Huxley called 'the sacramental vision of reality'(2) The God appearing in such momentary visions is not the 'Our Father' of traditional religions, but a metanoic (literally, 'mind-altering') experience of the Sacred, threatening to blast apart the very vessel into which it is being poured."

So what means are at YOUR disposal to "to access different states of consciousness and expose the resulting vision."?? Going berserk on acid? Or are you a somewhat milder type?


One of my experiences of enhanced visionary sensation were during the few (zen) retreats i've done.. After a few days of closed-eyed zazen, vivid displays of immense landscapes, faces, colorscapes, and transforming visiologues started to show up to my minds eye.. not that I gave them much attention (back to breathing, boy), but it struck me that some of those 'visionscapes' appeared to be far more detailed, wide, clear than the world 'outside'--seen through my two organic eyes'--this also goes for sounds by the way.. However being oftentimes totally 'otherworldly'.
I can imagine this to be a gate of inspiration, and the logic behind it is quite straightforward as well: diminishing sensory ques of the 'normal' outside world for a while is like wiping off the dust from the slumbering inner perceptive organs and thus leave's opportunity for the mind's eye to flourish and for subtle realities to make their way into the conscious experience.. I guess meditation practice only enhances this process as it tends to de-automatize (deikman, 1966) routinized cognitive processing and therefore enables tapping into wider phenomenological fields that  lead into the mystical forest of endless subtle realms..


Anyway, the author of the manifesto discusses many more ways 'n means to access these realms from which visionary artists get their inspiration. As a guest appearance, the authors strikes interesting bridges to the work of our beloved Ken when he for instance writes:

"As the psychedelic process continues and the subject explores the world of transpersonal phenomena, many of the ...attributes of the Newtonian-Cartesian world-view become philosophically untenable. The possiblity of transcending the limits of matter, time, space, and linear causality is experienced so many times and in so many different ways that it has to be integrated into the new world-view."

The philosopher who has made the greatest attempt to integrate these insights into a new world-view is Ken Wilber. Particularly through extended periods of meditation, he has tried to identify and articulate those transpersonal states which hallucinogens offer for a few 'peak' moments (of timeless duration.

and:

The states of mind offered by hallucinogens are many and varied. It is not simply a question of 'what images' may arise. More difficult for the Visionary artist to convey are the many modalities of perception, the multiple states of mind, and the kinds of insights that can occur. Many of these have been documented and brought together under the heading of 'Transpersonal' Psychology - perhaps the third revolution in psychology, after Freud and Jung. A quick glimpse at the books lying around the studio of many third generation Visionaries will no doubt reveal atleast one or two titles by Ken Wilber or Stanislav Grof - the former a philosopher of the transpersonal, the latter its
foremost psychologist.



Well, I'll let you to it!
Hope it tantalizes your visionary senses

~t

A wholesome tradition in our collective learning loop has been the application of Rule #6, potentially relevant in countless settings and messed-up situations..

rule#6a "Don't take yourself so gddmn serious!"
rule#6b "Don't take others so gddmn serious!"

It's a very effective way to shove your self-inflation infatuation: V for Veto-your-ego

~t4tablecloth